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Entries tagged with maddy

The Dive never really got crowded until the weekends, but they had s steady stream of people coming in on weeknights as well. As the club's promoter, Theresa dealt with the reviewer from the local entertainment rag in addition to trying to book new acts. All in all, things were looking promising. With summer nearly here, the college crowd would have more time and money to spend in places like this.

The vampire was nursing a beer on the patio. She had thought of suggesting they start serving something stronger, but she hadn't gotten around to it yet. It sounded like the latest set was wrapping up. She checked her upper lip for beer foam, hauled her slight weight off of the bench where she'd been sitting.

Summer in Las Vegas might man the days were long, but the nights usually made up for it.

Maddy was drunk. So very drunk. She tottered on a pair of ill-advised heels and stared at a yellow concrete wall. It was the side of an E-Z-mart, three blocks off the main drag in Las Vegas where the neighborhood started to get shifty. She had a bottle of booze in a brown paper bag, super classy, and a hot dog with extra relish. She was already dreading throwing it up later.

A few yards away, a bum huddled on the curb next to a phone booth. Maddy lifted her hooch in a respectful salute. “Exes, man,” she said. The bum lifted his drink in solidarity.

Five minutes with Gus had really fucked with her head and put her in full scale rebellion. Be a good girl, Maddy. Play nice. Join up with Team White. Well, what had Team White ever done for her? And since when was he on it?!

She wiped her nose and decided this spot was as good as any. Under her arm pit, Maddy held a can of spray paint. She shook it and a ball rattled in the canister. The paint went on too heavy and wet, but it wasn’t important to be anal-retentive. With three slow lines and a circular dot, the outline of a door was obvious. Maddy dropped the partial can.

“Let’s see… who shall we invite over for drinks?” She whirled on the bum, whose name was actually Sal, and gave him a bright (slightly crazed) smile. “No ideas? Hm? Well… This is Vegas. We’ll let the chips fall where they may.”

With pinched fingers, Maddy retrieved the key and its chain from her neckline. Then she closed her eyes and thought of…

Nothing. The Void. Which was no void at all, because it was full of entities, doorways, chaos. Then, before her brain could pull a Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man Maneuver, she pressed the key to the makeshift door knob. There was a click. A slow creak of hinges. An unusually charged breeze on her face, an otherworldly breeze that smelled faintly of mothballs and ozone.

And that is how Maddy left the wall, with a wide opening into Nowhere, and no clue what waited on the opposite side. She turned in the direction of home. "Later,” she told Sal around a mouthful of hot dog.

The year was 1945. Through a radio in the corner, Doris Day cooed the lyrics to Sentimental Journey. Blades of a fan twirled lazily in the summer air and the light of a dying afternoon slipped amber-yellow through the window shades. The air smelled of oak and whisky, tobacco and perfume.

It was all a bit of strange juxtaposition, considering the blood spewing from the crown of a man’s head as he toppled from his bar stool onto the slatted floor. Madeleine stood over him, a silver key swinging from her neck and a broken bottle in her hand. The lines up the backside of her pantyhose were crooked and perspiration stuck strands of hair to her neck. “That’s what you get for not calling.”

She crouched next to him and raised her cigarette over the wound for the sole purpose of ashing it at the first opportunity. “And that… is for sticking your Johnson in my roommate,” she hissed.

People were staring. Strike that, men were staring, regulars she knew from the bar, each of them with their own string of conquests. She wiped her forehead and yelled, “What?!”

A row of hats slowly pivoted back to the bar.

The memory of that moment – and all those faces – was as fresh today as it had been in 1945. So when Maddy saw the profile sitting at the bar, she stopped throwing darts and elbowed her way through a crowd of drunk people shouting at the Celtics game. “Hey! Hey, you!”

Melody had called Maddy the next morning, after meeting Theresa in the coffee shop, and asked her if she was working that day. She really wanted to try the potion, and it had a half life of thirty six hours before it started losing its potency. She'd been checking the colour and giving the bottle the shake it needed every so often to prevent the ingredients from separating.

When Maddy said she was working the late shift Melody was glad, and asked her to meet her for an early lunch, as Melody was working that afternoon and evening at a function in the Skylark. She hurried along the sidewalk, turning into the plaza and glancing up at the clock displayed in the centre of the outdoor dining area. She was a little late and she scanned the area, looking for Maddy. A series of small cafes and restaurants clustered around the area, making the most of the lunchtime trade from the businesses located all around.

Trouble. Maddy was looking to get into it. She was bored, had a cashed paycheck in her pocket, and was looking for a decent way to spend it. She sat on a street corner idly flicking a lighter. In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, she wore an off-the-shoulder shirt with a huge clover on it. Her canvas shoes twisted and tapped in the dry gutter in time with a saxophone player’s tunes. The street performer smelled like pot and possibly crack, but Maddy wasn’t going to point it out. The guy could wail. Loose change landed in his instrument case and Maddy gave the passerby a thumbs-up on his behalf, since his fingers were occupied on the keys. By midnight his case would be too heavy to lift, she predicted. Lots of drunk people wandering about tonight.

She tilted her head back. “Hey, do you know Pink Floyd?”

The guy smiled around his reed and began to crank out Money.

Maddy lit a cigarette and jabbed it at the air. “That’s what I’m talking about.” She scratched her wrist and watched people pour into any bar that was appropriately themed. McKenna's. O'Malley's. Green beer was on tap and suddenly everybody had an Irish grandma or great-uncle or whatever. She wondered if midgets experienced a higher level of harassment on St. Patrick's Day or if it was like, Their Day.

The parcels were finally all weighed and stamped, and the postal worker took them off the counter and dumped them in a crate. Melody went to stop him, tell him that there were some things that needed careful handling, but reminded herself she had packaged those very carefully and made sure they were protected for their journey.

So instead she gathered up the change he had dumped on the counter, slipped it into the plastic bag and sealed it before sliding it into the pocket of her jeans, along with the receipt. She pulled her coat closed, buttoning it up and tying the belt around her waist before stepping out into the cold blustery wind. It wasn't often she had to wear a coat, but today was one of those days, the wind coming straight down the street and cutting straight through, instead of going around.

The Dive, which was prone to a gritty atmosphere, had been transformed for New Year's festivities. A rotating disco ball hung above the crowd, as well as a web of streamers. Colorful lights lit the stage for its five-band line-up, which began with a local cover band and then transitioned to new wave, punk, synthpop, and glam rock acts, all staples of the year in music.

By 11:15 p.m., the crowd was slap-happy and drunk, thanks to happy hour prices on drinks and $1 Jell-o shots. The patio smelled like barbecuing meat and nacho cheese. Merchandise for the Dive and the bands moved quickly.

The world was halfway through the decade and antsy for the second half to begin.

The Fraying Nerves were wrapping up a five-song set and about to clear the stage for the Death Spirals, a band whose hairstyles were a fire hazard.

The grand ballroom of the Skylark Hotel was awash in shades of forest green and gold. The charity ball had been arranged to benefit a local children's hospital, and so a large percentage of the proceeds from the door tickets and bar would be donated to renovate the facility. A two-story Christmas tree towered over the buffet tables of festive finger foods and chocolate fountain, and people had placed unwrapped toys under the limbs to be delivered to the hospital the next day. Champagne flowed freely. There were two stages for the live jazz musicians that would play all night. Santa's scantily clad elves wandered about the room with trays of shrimp and caviar. A dance floor took up the center of the space underneath a gleaming chandelier and there were beautifully decorated round tables on the edges of the room.

The ticket price was manageable, and a few tickets had gone out free for radio promotions and the like.

Luckily for the undead, the decor did not include wall-to-wall mirrors, though there were a few on the high ceiling.

In various corners, Vegas performance artists entertained to ooohs and aaahs. For instance, there was a man eating a gleaming sword in the corner.

It was the holidays, which naturally meant that money was tight. Even though she had no family in the city, Madeleine Ricks had a handful of friends she considered as good as blood and they would get decent Christmas gifts if she had to wear holes in her bargain basement tap shoes.

Over the decades, Maddy had picked up a few talents that could be milked for extra cash. She could slaughter in a karaoke contest, she could pantomime crawling into invisible boxes, and she could tap dance. What she hadn’t learned by legitimate means, she made up for in waggling fingers and wind milling arms. It was her experience that if you faked talent like a champ, people either didn’t notice you were full of shit or were too impressed by your gumption to care. So she struck out for a busy corner next to a bank and danced to a dubbed cassette recording of Billy Joel’s 1977 album The Stranger. As ‘Only the Good Die Young’ swung into the third chorus, a scuzzy looking guy lurched past and stuffed a colorful item in with her cash.

Maddy stopped dancing and watched him disappear into the crowd. With suspicious eyes, she unscrewed the cap on her re-purposed mayonnaise jar and inspected its contents to discover eight dollar bills, five quarters, a poker chip, a Hershey’s kiss foil, and an empty condom wrapper. She sighed.

“It’s like I always say. Tis the motherfucking season,” she mumbled. She plucked it out with two fingers and dropped it on the sidewalk.

The drummer’s fists banged on a shittily constructed bedroom door, which blocked sound about as well as a hastily tacked up sheet. Madeleine had heard things through that door, terrible things, most of them having to do with the shared bathroom a few feet away. Mikey had one hell of a case of irritable bowel syndrome. With an impatient grunt, she stuck a finger in her book to save the page and rounded on the noise. “What!?”

‘I’m going to Vons. You want anything?’

The brunette rolled her eyes. “No. Wait, yeah. Bleach. A big-ass tarp. And some duct tape.”

‘Haha, you freaking psycho. You planning on killing somebody?’

“Yes.” Maddy’s voice was pointed, an aural knife cutting through the air.

‘Leaving.’ Mikey pulled on a flannel shirt and walked the narrow hallway to the door. He slammed it and trotted down the steps. Their apartment was on the second floor of a mixed purpose building. Underneath them was a bakery, and sometimes the whole joint reeked of yeast. There were worse things.

Once she was certain her roommate was gone, Maddy opened the book again and skimmed the contents of the page. “Where was I? Bzz-bzz-bzz… bunch of fucking Latin. At least I think that’s Latin.” She turned the page and eyed an engraving of an archway set in ancient ruins. Her thumb traced the thick paper on which it had been printed. “Here we go.”

She lowered her eyes and imagined the place and time. Night. A sky full of dying stars. Green grass underfoot. A chorus of bugs. When she lifted them again, a door had appeared in the wall before her. The keeper of keys slipped a long chain from her shirt and unlocked it. The door creaked on its hinges and, in a strange inversion of physics, darkness flooded her room.

When she finished a shift waiting tables at Cool Beans but it was too early to go home, Maddy sometimes curled up on a couch and read a used book. Those days generally corresponded to that time of the month when her landlord was hanging around looking for rent money, and she didn’t quite have it. Today, she was curled up with a copy of Stephen King’s novel Pet Sematary. She had slipped her shoes off and tucked her feet under herself. Her toes flexed in a pair of socks with black cats on them, and her fingers sifted through the ends of her hair.

“Hey Malcolm, bring me another coffee,” she called.

“Get it yourself,” grumbled her coworker, who was drying a load of dishes and stacking them on a shelf.

“I’m not working.” She flipped to the end of a chapter and skimmed a page.

“Are you paying?”

“No.”

“Then get it yourself.”

Maddy sighed and dragged herself off the couch. The novel, which she set upside down on the fat, upholstered arm, slipped to the floor and lost her page. She crammed her feet half in her shoes and stumbled to the counter, where she dangled her empty cup by the handle. “Meet me halfway.”

Cian had received a phone call from the occult shop telling him the things he'd ordered had arrived in. He had stayed overnight in Vegas and had spent the day working on the new diesel truck the owner of the casino had picked up 'for a bargain', understanding why the price had been so low. He sometimes wondered how a man smart enough to build a business the size of the casino was able to be taken for a ride by a car salesman like he had in this instance. He'd finally cleaned himself up and headed over to the shop, making it just before closing, and picking up the order. Not having eaten all day he decided to eat at the cafe next door before heading back down to Cottonwood Cove and the marina.

He went inside the Cool Beans and sat down, giving the menu a quick look, deciding fairly quickly what he would have.

The Fraying Nerves had another twenty minutes or so until their set, so a couple of the band members hung out behind the stage, a little off to the side, where they could see the crowd. Maddy sat down on a guitar case and picked at her fingernail polish. Brian noted that the case wasn’t hers, but didn’t care enough to point it out and start an argument, because he was pretty sure the brunette had PMS. He flexed his fingers and sat over a low wall that separated the crowd from the staging area, swinging his feet.

Maddy painted the words on a sandwich board and set up shop at the gas station. For a percentage of her profits, the manager allowed her to hook a water hose up to the faucet. She set up a station with buckets, soap, Windex, wet and dry towels and a cash box. On a steady diet of Slushees and hot dogs, she scrubbed cars until sundown in a bikini top, torn jeans, and a baseball cap.

"Anything for a buck," she muttered as she pocketed a few sweaty dollars and checked the time.

Cian stretched his legs out under the table, making sure they weren't going to trip any other patrons up, and picked up the coffee cup on the table in front of him. He'd finished his lunch, and after a quick glance at his watch realised he still had another half an hour to wait for the occult shop next door to open. He knew he should have rung up first to check what time they were opening. It seems that Wednesdays were a slow morning in the magic trade and so the store had decided to reduce its overheads by not opening until 2pm.

He spun the empty cup on the table, eyes staring outside, watching the world as it walked by that shop.

At twenty-four years old, Madeleine Ricks was trapped in the body of a fifteen year old. Or so it appeared to the rest of the world. At 5’5”, she was of average height, but thin as a rail with limited curvature. The results were infuriating. Carded for alcohol, carded for smokes, and the latest insult, carded for Gore Fest at the Huntridge Theater. Only this time, she had stuffed cash in the pocket of her overalls and left her ID card at home.

The employee – who had barely scratched eighteen himself – suggested she bring her mother to sign a release form.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” she screeched. She slapped her palms on the plexi-glass that separated the ticket salesman from the throng of fans splattered in fake blood outside. Making a scene wouldn’t get her anywhere. On a cognitive level, Maddy understood it. But she had a hell of a temper. She grabbed the paper and rolled it up lengthwise. “Do me a favor, okay? Heh… you take this release form and you gently guide it up your pimple-covered ass!”

She left the window and paced in front of the building, chewing a hangnail.